Fearmongering

Fearmongering or scaremongering is the spreading of frightening and exaggerated rumors of an impending danger or the habit or tactic of purposely and needlessly arousing public fear about an issue. This can take the form of psychological manipulation that uses fear-based tactics (scare tactics) including exaggeration and usually repetition to influence the public in order to achieve a desired outcome. It is a tactic used to scare or put fear into those viewing a campaign/advertisement and influence the outcome based on fear.

There is no doubt that fear can be an effective medium at relaying a message, however things go much deeper than that. Research shows that the effects of using fear marketing can both be facilitating and inhibiting to whether the audience accepts the message. Fear marketing is especially effective with certain markets, while others are much less affected . Fear seems to be an effective means for new products to show their usefulness to a market that has never before considered their product, as well as it is effective at targeting those with low anxiety and high self-esteem. In our world the population is oversaturated with vast quantities of advertising. In this environment, fear is very effective, as it cuts through the other positive messages, providing something that the consumer may have never heard of before and is very different from the other messages that they receive throughout the day.

The effectiveness of fear in marketing comes from the ability to establish a need. For example, with life insurance. If a marketing campaign uses fear to target people who do not have life insurance, it can awake a desire for the product, as it can allow people to see the need for this product. To go along with this, if a person who sees this advert already has life insurance, they can act in a negative way, which reduces their affinity for the product in question. Fear truly is, a double edged sword. On one hand, it is very effective with certain groups and can easily translate a message, whilst on the other hand, with many groups, it will have no effect and, in some cases actually have a detrimental effect, either making people form a dislike for a product, or act in the opposite way to what the message wanted them to.

The effectiveness of fear is subject to several variables. The audience watching, the way it has been encoded, the transmission form and the degree of fear that is used . Tests that have been performed show that a low level of fear in adverts is effective with only some groups, while it is hypothesised that using more graphic imagery may invoke stronger emotions, leaving a more lasting impact. Whether this is true or not is yet to be seen, as there is heavy ethical implications with using graphical imagery in advertising, due to the mass market that may be exposed to it, so much so that it has not yet been fully researched .

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